Growing PAL One Young Athlete at A Time

As he prepared for a girls’ softball double-header on a recent Friday night, Rob Elkins reflected on how much the Port Washington Police Activities League, better known as PAL, has grown in the past year.

When he formed and ran a PAL girls’ travel softball team in 2009, the local PAL “was on the verge of closing down,” Elkins said.

The nonprofit organization is more than 60 years old, having been established in 1948. “It’s one of the oldest established programs in the county [Nassau], certainly in Port Washington,” Elkins said.

Elkins, who was later asked by PAL executive directors to run the league toward the end of 2009, has turned the sports league from one where about 30 children participated to one that today has at least 250 athletes.

“I set out to run PAL under a general growth program,” Elkins said. “The second step, start to improve the fields.”

The softball and baseball teams play on two fields at 325 Main Street. “It was little steps – repair the dugout roofs, paint the dugouts, replace the benches so people could sit and watch the games,” he said. “Then, [the goal remained] to fill out the programs.”

Elkins does many of the repairs himself or assists with them personally. 

Aside from now having three girls’ travel softball teams, there is a PAL boys’ travel baseball team. Elkins also developed new programs, including volleyball, a “younger” soccer program for prekindergarten and kindergarten students, T-ball and flag football.

Elkins also hopes to develop an in-house 8-year-olds baseball team, from which a travel team could stem, he said. And a basketball team will start up in the fall, Elkins added.

“One of the key things with our programs is we only use professional coaches,” Elkins emphasized.

PAL also hosts existing soccer and softball camps during the summer, which are run by the Premier Soccer Academy and Diamond Pros Baseball Academy, respectively.

Since it is the ‘police’ activities league, the is “attentive to things that go on here,” Elkins said, noting that Deputy Chief Ron DeMeo is the PAL executive director. “Their involvement is friendly and full of community spirit.”

“We really try to make it a family atmosphere,” Elkins said, adding that his work running PAL – something he calls a “full-time hobby” – is far from being finished. He would like to see PAL “grow even more,” Elkins added.

Those who wish to participate do not have to be Port Washington residents, Elkins said. All participants must pay registration fees, which amount to less than $20 week, Elkins pointed out.

PAL accepts outside sponsors, with Moe's Restaurant the biggest. "In exchange for them buying new uniforms for the softball teams, we hung a Moe's banner at the field," Elkins said.

For more information about the Port Washington Police Activities League, visit www.pwpal.org.